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Japanese firm develops 'artificial intelligence chat robots'

A Japanese company has invented the world's first artificial intelligence "chatbots" designed to converse with English language students.

Education company SpeakGlobal revealed its 'chat robots' use high-speed speech recognition technology which enables them to have real-time spoken conversations.

They can be accessed online where students can participate in the 'virtual world' that the robots inhabit, the firm added.

'SpeakGlobal has developed online robots that look and move like a human, speak aloud and with text-to-speech, its dialogue lines appear on the user's computer screen,' the company said in a statement.

'Most importantly, learners can speak into a microphone using Dragon Naturally Speaking, high-end speech recognition, considered the best speech recognition in the world,' it added.

The concept behind the technology was driven by the high cost of one-to-one language classes in Japan, SpeakGlobal revealed.

A recent article in the Huffington Post suggested incorporating technology into the classroom more effectively could raise literacy rates among boys.